


Sodom and Gomorrah

by K_dAzrael



Category: Watchmen (2009), Watchmen (Comic)
Genre: Genderswitch, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 20:24:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_dAzrael/pseuds/K_dAzrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You tried to hammer yourself out straight, didn’t you? But it doesn’t work that way – you don’t get to be <i>unkinked</i>.” </p><p>Oh, Twilight Lord is going to crack Rorschach open like a walnut and there is nothing Danielle can do but watch, in sick fascination.</p><p>Fem!Dan, male!Rorschach. Pre-Roche. Moore-verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to [Glitter](http://brancher.livejournal.com/24903.html) by [](http://brancher.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://brancher.livejournal.com/)**brancher**. Read that first (because it's awesome).

**Prologue**

The back door of the station swings shut behind him and Danielle is standing with her arms folded across her chest, half defensive and half angrily-maternal. His platforms are scuffed and most of the glitter has rubbed off his high, patrician cheekbones. A crusted cut bisects his bottom lip and one black eye is kohl but the other is all natural.

“Boys in the station give you a hard time, hmm?”

“Oh, this? No, it’s the handiwork of your tiny, malodorous friend.”

She looks his catsuit up and down (this one is lamé in a gunmetal silver). “That outfit looks fucking ridiculous in the daylight.”

He glances from where he’s sparking a roll-up cigarette and looks her square in the goggles. “Is that a fact, Nite Owl?”

She unfolds her arms, awkwardly refolds them. “You could at least thank me for bailing you out.”

His eyes sparkle with perverted joy and when he grins his lip splits again – she can see why Rorschach hates him so profoundly. “Oh, I _will_.”

Vinyl creaks – both their suits – and there is nothing glamorous or desirable about being face-first up against crumbling brick, except – _fuck and fucking fuck!_ – his hand on the back of her neck, the seam of his glove rasping on the protruding vertebra. His dick is as improbably big as those jelly-coloured dildos she and Rorschach inevitably find when they raid dens of vice (Twilight Lord’s dens of vice! Maybe, in a supreme act of vanity, he models them on himself). She is making a stupid whimpering sound every time she involuntarily clenches around it and he is doing little more than teasing – pushing in half way and then withdrawing completely, rubbing the head of it against her clit. The rumble of the industrial extractor fan above them is not enough to cover the sound of how wet she is.

He is laughing, a low, insinuating chuckle, and he never, never stops talking – an insolent, filthy croon in her ear which she hates and, now, can’t stop replaying on a loop every time she touches herself.

“That’s it Dani, give it up, good girl, good girl...”

She shakes so hard she thinks she might have jarred something vital out of place – gasping, she turns her face to the side and squints against the dawn sun reaching like fingers towards her.

A figure pauses in the mouth of the alley with a placard that tells her the end is nigh.

*~*~*

She doesn’t consider herself paranoid – that’s Rorschach’s forte – but Danielle thinks the hookers on 7th Avenue are looking strangely at her, talking among themselves and nudging one another. It puts her off the normal calm, authoritative tone she uses when addressing citizens.

“Er... good evening ladies. Who called in the report about a stalker?”

One girl eyes her lazily and pops her gum. “You aint a cop.”

“No,” she puts her hands on her hips in a pose meant to evoke unflappable confidence and heroism, “but I don’t see the police rushing down here to help you.”

A girl in neon fishnets straightens out of her cross-armed slouch. “You Nite Owl?”

She gestures to her costume emphatically. “Uh, yes.”

The girl reaches out and grasps her wrist. “Then somebody wants to talk to you, come on.”

*~*~*

“ _Bonsoir_ , Danielle.” The voice on the other end of the grimy payphone receiver is rich and insolent, instantly recognisable.

“Fuck you, Leslie.”

He laughs. “Perhaps, perhaps, but I’m afraid I have to talk over some rather tedious business with you first.”

“I don’t think I like your definition of ‘business’.”

“I don’t like yours. Or, more specifically, your partner’s.”

“Rorschach isn’t... I haven’t even seen him in two weeks. Whatever he’s been up to has nothing to do with me.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Twilight Lord says. He gives an address off Broadway. “Drop on by, Danielle, I’ll be here all night. _A bientôt, j’espère_.”

He hangs up before she can get in a scathing retort.

*~*~*

She refuses to give him the satisfaction of rushing over, but when the crimes thin out in the hours before dawn, she makes her way across town to a what turns out to be an abandoned theatre. Light shines around the gaps between the boards and there are sounds of activity emanating from within – hammering and the whirring of power tools.

She hesitates before knocking and then shakes herself – well, Twilight Lord is into some odd and kinky stuff, but torture is certainly above his pay grade.

The door opens a crack on a chain and a sliver of face squints at her. The door closes again and the chain is unfastened. Danielle steps into the light and finds a woman with Marlene Dietrich eyebrows staring at her with a way that suggests she is unimpressed.

“Nite Owl, I take it? Go ahead, he’s expecting you.”

Danielle walks in the direction the blood-red fingernail points, her boots creaking on the suspect floorboards. She finds a door is ajar off to the left, yellow light spilling across the floor.

Beyond the doorway, Twilight Lord is sitting – lounging, rather – on a dusty Eames chair. This particular catsuit has a front zip, and it is all the way down. There is a male youth kneeling between his legs. The youth is wearing midnight blue short-shorts covered in yellow stars and a pair of thigh-high boots. His dark hair curls against his sweat-damp forehead and the nape of his neck, and he is deep-throating the Twilight Lord’s cock with a look of great concentration. The elder man rubs at the hinge of his jaw with his gloved fingers.

“Easy, easy, don’t tense up so much.” He lets out a soft groan. “Good boy. Magnificent.”

Danielle feels her thighs go tense with a sudden and unwanted arousal. She thinks to step back out of sight of what must be a private moment when the Twilight Lord looks up and grins at her.

“Ah, Nite Owl. Well, better late than never.”

The youth opens his eyes and pulls off with an obscenely wet sound, then rubs his gleaming, pink lips with the back of his hand. “The fuck, Leslie? What’s a mask doing here?”

“Easy,” Twilight Lord says again, rubbing the boy behind his ear like a cat. “Danielle, come and meet my protégé. I imagine he’ll choose his own name, eventually, but for now we call him Twilight Lad.”

“Twilight... Lad?” Danielle’s brain shuts off for a minute. She has nothing. Then she kicks into some hero autopilot: “what age are you, son? Are you being kept here against your will? Would you like me to call your parents, or protective services?”

The youth blinks at her and then openly laughs in her face. “Is she for real?”

“Just because you’ve never met a real do-gooder before doesn’t mean they don’t exist, dear.” Twilight Lord unfolds himself from the chair and raises the zip on his costume, making himself almost decent except for the part where his suit is skintight and he is still hard. “Go on – take a break.” He pats the youth’s ass affectionately and kisses his cheek in something like the benediction of a mafia don.

After Twilight Lad slips out, Nite Owl turns to face the elder man and lets the exasperation and disapproval show in the set of her mouth.

Twilight Lord spreads his hands in a gesture of protested innocence. “Don’t look at me like that – he’s seventeen.”

She continues to glare. “Oh, good, ‘cause for a minute there I thought you might be exploiting someone.”

He squeezes her shoulder, his voice that intimate rumble. “Dani, Dani, let’s not fight. Come, I want to show you something.” He leads the way back into the atrium and towards an aluminium staircase. Behind it there are hook lights rigged along the walls and she can see two large rooms to the left and right in which a labyrinthine series of cubicles are being constructed by a crew of workmen.

“What is this place?”

“This is my magnum opus! I had a vision, Dani,” he turns and raises his arms. “I saw a new Sodom and a new Gomorrah.”

“Uh... ok?”

“On the left will be the suites for those who wish to exercise their perversions on those of the same sex. Naturally, those on the right will be for those who prefer to dally with their opposite number. There will be a number of communicating doors, of course. Now, they’re not finished or furnished with all their necessary... accoutrements, yet, but each room will be a wonder of taste and ingenuity.”

“Is any of this legal, Leslie?”

He makes a face at the word ‘legal’ as if it leaves a bad taste in his mouth. “Why not? No drugs – at least, not that I provide. The boys in blue haven’t dared bust a gay bar in this town since Stonewall and we’ll be keeping everything strictly safe, sane and consensual.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.” Is she actually disappointed? What the fuck is wrong with her?

“Well, well,” he puts his large, masculine hands on her shoulders and smiles. “While I can’t deny that I will sorely miss the heady excitement of the old days, now that you’ve caught me, darling, it simply seems absurd to keep giving you cause to keep up the chase. Come, I want to show you the best part.”

Their boots clank on the metal staircase and he pushes open the door of frosted glass at the top to show a large... office? Viewing platform? The glass is opaque from without but clear from within. Whoever occupies this room will be able to gaze down into the roofless rooms below to survey the goings-on. There is a desk and an imposing high-backed chair. The far wall is dominated by a large metal sculpture – a rack with an elongated, androgynous figure hanging on it in what is surely a blasphemous echo of the crucified Christ.

“Look on my works, ye mighty,” Twilight Lord intones. She rolls her eyes at him because _really_.

“Don’t you ever get bored of it?” she asks, seating herself on the edge of the desk.

“Of what?” He drapes himself in the chair-cum-throne and begins rubbing her knee – a light pressure she can hardly feel through her costume.

“I don’t know. Hedonism. Fucking.”

“What an absurd question. Does a Michelin-starred chef get bored of food? Does a maestro tire of music?”

She gives up this line of inquiry as unproductive. “So, you wanted to tell me something about Rorschach?”

“You really haven’t seen him of late?”

“He... he has odd habits. He’s disappeared before, but never for as long.”

“And the last time you met? Did he seem... unusual?”

She wracks her brain, tries to think and ruthlessly repress the part of her that wants to crawl into the Twilight Lord’s lap. “Grunting out parts of sentences, kicking drug-dealers in the head – which all passes for normal with him, I guess.”

“You haven’t mentioned me to him?”

“No, why?”

“He came around here last night. He didn’t name you, specifically, but I got the idea he thought I had... ‘defiled’ – yes, that’s the word he used – defiled something or someone of great importance. Any thoughts on what that might mean?”

Danielle sighs, lowering her head. “Leslie, I haven’t said anything to him about... about us. I know how he is – I wouldn’t.”

“He scared my employees and he injured two of the security guards. It can’t go on Danielle. I’m asking you to make sure he understands that.” He is giving her a steely, magisterial look, much sterner than anything she has ever seen before – predictably, the lower parts of her anatomy decide it is appealing and begin to throb and tingle.

“I’ll do my best to track him down.”

He rubs one glittering cheek. “For his sake, I hope you do.”

He rises, fitting his slim hips between her thighs with an insistent nudge, then he tilts her head back and kisses her as if he’s drinking her in.

“You’ll come to the opening?” He pulls a slim piece of card from an invisible pocket in the front of the suit and brushes it against the bare portion of her face – it is still warm from his body. “Wear whatever costume you like, darling.” He caresses the seam of her crotch. “Though, obviously, this one is my very favourite.”

*~*~*

When she emerges from the theatre she glances up to see Twilight Lad smoking a cigarette on the first landing of the rickety fire escape. Danielle swings up onto it with ease and places herself next to him. He spares her a brief, uninterested glance and then goes back to paging through the thick book he has open on his lap. He is still wearing the ridiculous panties-and-boots combination, but he has draped a leather biker jacket around his shoulders to fend off the pre-dawn chill.

“You know,” she says, “those come in a cancer-free variety now.”

“Yeah, but the taste isn’t the same.”

Danielle supposes that there is no point in trying to convince a teenager he isn’t immortal. “So, are you really ok?” she asks.

He scowls. “You don’t dress like any social worker I’ve ever seen, if that’s your job.”

“I know Leslie can be very charming and persuasive – believe me, I know. I don’t always agree with his choices–”

“If you honestly think he’s interested in vapid fucktoys then you don’t know him as well as you claim to. He didn’t pick me up, you know – if that’s what you’re imagining. As a matter of fact, I asked the Twilight Lord to take me on.”

“Take you on as what?”

“As an apprentice. He’s going to be running this place, and he needs someone to look after his other concerns. I know the streets around here, I’m good at organizing, so...”

“And this apprenticeship, does it involve more than... what I saw downstairs?”

Twilight Lad wreathes cigarette smoke from his nose and laughs again, more amused than derisive. “That’s just recreation.” He holds up the book he’s reading: _Bookkeeping and Accountancy_.

“Right,” Danielle says. “Well, um, carry on, I guess.”

As she moves to go, he offers: “Leslie’s a decent guy, you know?”

“I don’t think there are many people in the world who would call him ‘decent’.”

The youth shrugs. “He’s my friend. He’s the only person I know who doesn’t bullshit – not even himself. He always tells it like it is.” He tugs at the gold hoop through his left ear. There’s an olive tone to his sun-starved skin – part latino, Danielle thinks. He has a kind of star quality, like a less tragic Sal Mineo.

Twilight Lad continues, warming to the subject: “there’s two kinds of people in the world, Leslie says: honest perverts and fucking hypocrites. It’s like this – if he says he’ll do something for you, he does it. If he says he wants you around, he means it. I never met anyone like that before.”

“Well, is it true what he said about Rorschach?”

“The guy in the overcoat and the creepy mask?”

Danielle nods.

“Yeah. He’s been sniffing around. Came by the other night, threatening.”

“He didn’t see _you_ , did he?”

“Nah, Leslie made me hide out in the back, but I heard him. Later I saw the damage he did.” He turns his gaze on her. His eyes are dark and striking, almost black – Twilight Lord’s are hazel, she thinks – brown with a ring of acid green around the pupil. “Is he really your friend, that Rorschach guy?”

“I don’t know if he’d agree, but I think of him as a friend. He works with me, sometimes. He helps people that need help, and he disarms the bad guys – the real bad guys. The thugs, murderers and rapists.”

“I don’t like the way he talks. All that whores and degenerates stuff. My mother was a working girl, you know? She didn’t get many breaks in life and she had an addiction, but she still did her best for me – at least, as long as she could.”

“Rorschach has some... issues,” Danielle says, feeling it’s the understatement of the century. “I’ll talk to him, I promise.” She pulls a matchbook from where he’s tucked it into the top of his boot and flips it open, taking a pen from her utility belt to give him her home number. “Anyone gives you any more trouble, you call me, ok?”

He gives her an insolent salute, cigarette twitching in the side of his sensual mouth. “I’m Richard, by the way. Just guess what they call me for short.”

She rolls her eyes. “Dick?”

He laughs, pleased she took the bait. “Nah, Ricky.”

*~*~*

Danielle refuses to go to the (re)opening of Sodom and Gomorrah. On the date printed on her invitation she deliberately stays home late, wearing her ugliest, bulkiest sweater in a private defiance of Twilight Lord’s empire of sex and glamour. She stays down in the basement listening to jazz on the radio and humming discordantly as she restocks the compartments of her utility belt; hones, reloads and charges her weapons.

Not everyone who puts on a costume is doing it for perverse kicks, she thinks. She’s a hero, goddamn it.

At one a.m. the extension for the house phone rings. She pushes her glasses up her nose and frowns in confusion, then hops out of Archie’s hull onto the walkway to pick up.

“Hello?”

“Nite Owl, that you?” It’s a young voice, faintly panicked, and she can’t immediately tell whether it’s male or female.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Twilight Lad.” He says this name as if it isn’t hilarious.

“Oh, hi Ricky – what’s up?”

“Listen, your mask friend came by and some bad shit went down. Leslie has him under control now, but you should get over here as soon as you can–”

Danielle feels her stomach sink like a stone. “What do you mean ‘under control’?”

“It’s better you come and see.”

*~*~*

There are some visible signs of Rorschach’s visit to Sodom and Gomorrah – the splintered front door, a hole in the floorboards, one of the panes of frosted plate glass shattered – but the place is still largely intact and the party continues unabated.

She is surprised by the sheer diversity of people flitting back and forth between the warren of rooms. She had assumed they would all be thin, young and glamorous, but there are patrons of all ages and sizes.

“Stand aside, ladies,” Night Owl tells two older women in leather and chains who are blocking her ascent to Twilight Lord’s panopticon office. “Please remain calm, this isn’t a raid.”

They smile maternally at her. The one with grey hair in a crew cut reaches out to pinch her cheek. “Adorable,” she says. “Do you want to come and do a scene with us?”

“I um... I don’t really know what that means.”

“You tell us,” purrs the other, dark curls peeping out from under her Rosie the Riveter headscarf. “Maybe the brave hero has been captured by the nefarious villain–”

“–Ah, delightful as that sounds I really have to, I um...” she bumbles past them and the jogs up the metal stairs.

The Marlene Dietrich woman from before is manning the door at the top. She nods gravely at Nite Owl and enters a code to let her pass.

Twilight Lord is standing with his back to her when she enters the room, hands clasped around his coiled bullwhip. Twilight Lad – Ricky – is leaning on the desk, poking through a jumble of clothing. Danielle can’t help but notice that there is a naked man zip-tied to the rack sculpture. He is so strikingly ugly it veers into intriguing – unkempt red hair, wide-set blue eyes and stick-out ears. His pale body is covered in a riot of freckles, clustering on his shoulders and the bridge of his snub nose.

Twilight Lord looks over one shoulder at her and she suddenly notices the familiarity of the scattered clothes – purple pinstripe poking out from under a dirty raincoat. A distinctive black and white mask, looking deflated and sad on the top of the pile.

“Rorschach?” she says. The wild betrayal in the man’s eyes makes her instantly regret having called that name.

“His real name is Walter,” Ricky says, holding up a creased, ancient payslip. “Walter Kovacs.”

Twilight Lord turns, hands creaking threateningly on the leather of the whip. “You’ve given us quite a lot of trouble tonight, haven’t you Walter? Now your poor mother hen Danielle has to come in and talk to the principal.”

“Jesus, Leslie, you can’t keep him strung up like that–” she moves towards the rack only to hear the whistle and crack of the whip licking her toes.

“Not so fast, Nite Owl – don’t you want to know what he did to earn that punishment?”

“He broke up the place a little, I get it. Let me get him out of here and you have my word he won’t bother you again.”

“The damage was rather more than superficial. Six of my security staff are in hospital – two in the ICU. Oh, and that’s not all.” He jerks his chin at his protégé, “go on – show her.”

Twilight Lad jumps down off the table and reluctantly unzips his jacket. He pulls it aside to show red and purple contusions all up his side.

Danielle covers her mouth with her hand. “Oh Ricky, fuck–”

Twilight Lord sneers, pointing with the handle of his whip. “Yes, the great hero – champion of justice and decency – beats on unarmed teenagers.”

“Can I go now?” Ricky asks, scuffing the floor with the toe of one of his patent leather boots.

Twilight Lord slings an arm around his shoulders and walks him to the door. “What did they give you in the hospital, hmm?”

Ricky fishes a bottle of generic ibuprofen of his jacket and Twilight Lord makes a face at it. “Tell Gretchen to take you out in the car and score something decent.” He rubs the youth’s hair and Danielle can’t help but watch Rorschach’s naked face – noting the anger and disgust that the gesture provokes. _Because he assumes it’s something to do with sex, or simply because it’s affectionate?_ she wonders. She thinks about an incident a few months ago where she put her hand on his arm as an accompaniment to a her rousing “good job, partner!” for a smuggling bust well wrapped up. Rorschach had all but leapt away from her, as if the touch gave him an electric shock. _“Enkh – not necessary, Nite Owl.”_

Twilight Lord closes the door and the automatic lock clicks. He crosses to the desk and eases himself down on its edge, long legs crossed at the ankle. He looks over at Danielle and beckons, patting the expanse of mahogany next to himself.

“Now, Walter, we are going to have a talk. No masks.” He pulls off the small, angular domino mask he wears while entertaining. “Dani, if you would.”

She takes off her goggles and the world goes softer around the edges. She pushes back her cowl and runs her fingers through her flattened hair – always wavy and disobedient.

Twilight Lord continues, affably: “a great man once said: ‘man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth’.”

“Oscar Wilde,” says Rorschach – and if Danielle hadn’t been convinced before she is now, that rough-edged monotone is so familiar she almost jumps. He sneers at Twilight Lord as he adds: “Degenerate. Like you.”

Twilight Lord laughs, apparently delighted to have provoked a response. “And yet you’re the one strung naked to a rack. How on earth did that happen, Walter? Hmm?”

“Don’t say my name, filth. Don’t want it sullied by your mouth.”

“Look at Danielle,” he says. “Is she filth too?”

Rorschach turns his face away, lowers his eyes.

“Go on Walter, or this is going to be a rather long and tedious night. Look at her – look at your partner.”

His eyes lift – they are a pure and frigid blue.

“Is Danielle filth?”

“No,” he says, quietly. “Nite Owl is a good soldier. Danielle... is my friend.”

Twilight Lord nods, then reaches out to put his hand on Danielle’s arm. “She is my friend, too.”

“No!” Rorschach shouts, spit flecking from his lips. “Not friendship. Lying! Defilement!”

Twilight Lord raises an index finger to his ear and twists it, wincing. “I’m sorry, Walter – I don’t speak crazy. Dani, darling, can you translate?”

“Rorschach,” she says, because he hasn’t given her permission to use his real name. “I want you to understand a few things. I’m an adult and Leslie hasn’t done anything to me that I didn’t want. He isn’t the first man I’ve made love with and he certainly hasn’t ‘defiled’ me – do you get that?”

“Not... love,” he says, his voice so low and furious she almost recoils.

Twilight Lord leans forward, eyes bright with interest. “And what is love, Walter?”

“Not answering any more of your questions, filth.”

“Very well,” he says. He lifts his right hand to his lips and uses his sharp eyeteeth to pull at the tips of his glove, then draws it off in a slow, threatening movement. Danielle realises she has never seen his bare arm before – it is corded with muscle, his fingers are long and blunt-tipped.

Twilight Lord is going to crack Rorschach open like a walnut and there is nothing she can do but watch, in sick fascination.

He reaches over and brushes the backs of his fingers against Danielle’s cheek.

“Danielle is very beautiful, isn’t she?” he says. “Perhaps not beautiful – beauty is fragile, after all, and she is emphatically, not. Shall we say handsome, then, which is better. Stronger. ”

Rorschach flinches, as if slapped – except he doesn’t flinch when people hit him, so whatever this is must be worse.

“Which is her most striking feature, do you think?” Twilight Lord tilts his head, considering. Danielle wants to curl up and hide herself – she knows she is not beautiful, not striking, and will not hold up to such scrutiny. “Her mouth, perhaps?” he continues. “Do you know what I like? Her hips. The costume covers so much, doesn’t it – makes her almost androgynous, but those are... insistent. They can’t be hidden.” He reaches inside her cloak and his bare hand grasps her at the narrowest point of her waist and squeezes.

Rorschach struggles against his bonds, snarling like an animal. “No! No! No!”

Twilight Lord removes the errant hand and holds it up, as if in surrender. The glint in his eyes says he is enjoying himself immensely.

“Shall we talk about you instead, Walter? You’re very strong, and very scarred. How did you get that way?”

Rorschach stares at him with a determined blankness, but Twilight Lord smiles. “Well! I suppose I’ll have to talk about myself then. My area of expertise is finding out what people want and then giving them the means to attain it.” He links his fingers, black vinyl against pale flesh. “If that thing is sex, then I find out when and why and in what manner they want it. Some people have special requirements – the world calls that a kink. And do you know, there are lots of reasons for kink – often, no reason at all, merely habit.” He leans forward, tilting his head to make Rorschach meet his gaze. “But I recognise yours – I know what it is and why you have it. I have met people like you before.”

Rorschach’s lip twitches at this, he continues: “oh, that angers you, doesn’t it? Because you think you are special, unique. Darling, do not kid yourself, or imagine yourself a holy mystery.” He rises to his feet and moves a step closer to the chained man. “You think you are unloved, and have been so your entire life. Those that touched you, hurt you, and so you imagine hurt is all there is. You decided to dole it out, as well as receive it, because that is only fair. It appeases the angry child that you were and always will be.”

Twilight Lord lifts the coiled whip from where it hangs at his belt and tosses it aside, a gesture to show he doesn’t need it to make Rorschach come undone. “Sex confuses you, because you can’t imagine how human bodies fit together in any other way than shame and pain. I don’t mean to sound critical, Walter. Certainly, shame and pain have their place in fantasy, but – much like the privileges of your mask – you abuse it. You forget that it is only a fantasy – only one way of looking, of being.”

He cocks his head, scrutinizing Rorschach as if he can see past the pale, freckled visage; as if he can read every line and scar. “You don’t like women, do you Walter? You think they’re weak and sensual, and easily bullied.” He turns to look at Danielle for a moment, thoughtful. “Dani’s different though, isn’t she? In your eyes she’s a ‘soldier’, so how can she let herself be defiled, when she doesn’t have to? That _is_ a mystery.”

“Your fault,” Rorschach rasps out.

“Well, it must be,” Twilight Lord agrees. “You hate me so very much, don’t you Walter? That says something. Is it because I touch your beloved partner in ways you can’t allow yourself to enjoy? Or am I a figure for something else – am I daddy, Walter? Or the succession of men who lay in daddy’s place, however briefly?”

Rorschach’s face flickers with rage before he forces it back into blankness – it’s too late, but an admirable effort nonetheless.

Twilight Lord’s voice becomes smoky and intimate: “do you _need_ a daddy? Do you need someone to correct you? Or just to tell you it’s all alright, so that you can finally stop punishing yourself?” He steps yet closer, voice dropping to an intimate murmur. “Oh, you tried to hammer yourself out straight, didn’t you? But it doesn’t work that way – you don’t get to be _unkinked_.” He puts his hands on Rorschach’s shoulders and Danielle jumps – expecting Rorschach to lunge, or break free from his bonds somehow rather than suffer himself to be touched. He tenses all over, eyes rolling like a frightened horse trapped in a stall.

“It’s alright, Walter,” Twilight Lord murmurs. “No-one’s going to hurt you. There now.”

His hands run the length of Rorschach’s arms and back up again in a sweeping caress, then across his sternum and down to his stomach, carding through the patch of wiry hair below his navel. Danielle’s mouth is dry – she wonders what it feels like, the slide of the glove and the burning touch of just one bare hand.

“You don’t have to look at me,” Twilight Lord says, voice so quiet it seems his words are for Rorschach alone. “Look at her.”

For a second Rorschach does – his eyes are shocked and beseeching, She isn’t entirely sure what he wants her to do – release him? Join them?

“You do not love yourself, Walter, but Danielle loves you, did you know that? She rushes to protect you, to make excuses for you. She doesn’t do that out of charity.” Twilight Lord goes down on one knee, head tilted back as his hands map Rorchach’s compact, powerful thighs. Danielle tries to avoid staring where she really shouldn’t, but there is no denying the physical reaction taking place – Rorschach is getting hard, his dick thickening and taking on a dark flush, so very telling against his white skin.

Twilight Lord doesn’t touch that though – instead, he stands up and brings his hands to Rorschach’s face, thumbs over his eyelids like he is giving dignity to a corpse.

“Very good,” he says. “You are very good.” The way he strokes Rorschach’s shoulders the second time is firmer, a touch to bring him back to reality.

He steps away and addresses Danielle again. “You can cut him down now.”

She expects Rorschach to bolt or start throwing punches as she takes a crescent blade to the rows of cable ties and finally sets him free, but he merely stands and looks lost until she starts to press items of clothing into his hands. He puts them on with the sightless, automatic movements of a sleepwalker.

Twilight Lord is standing by a plate window, looking down at his empire. His hands are behind his back clasping the coiled whip again, almost as if he has a prehensile tail. “You are welcome to come back, Walter,” he says, sparing an unconcerned glance over his shoulder. “But do leave that brute Rorschach at home, won’t you?”


	2. Chapter 2

The next evening Danielle is sitting on her sofa looking through the box of keepsakes she took from a leaky storage basement in the Charlton Home for Problem Children. There is a damp-crinkled picture of a tired-looking woman with a faded version of Rorschach’s – Walter’s – red hair, and next to her a sullen, watchful little boy with a pale, pinched face. There are journals too – depressing insights into the neglect and casual violence which seemed to be key components of the home’s curriculum. 

The door bell rings and she puts the box aside, frowning as she glances at her watch. A glance through the peephole shows her a teenager bouncing on the soles of sneakered feet, blue jeans, a leather jacket and the glint of a gold earring.

She is polishing her glasses on her shirt as she answers the door. “Hey Ricky, what’s up?” She doesn’t bother asking how he found the address. ‘Dreiberg, D’ is listed in the phonebook (next the number she already carelessly gave him) and she’s under no illusions that Twilight Lord hasn’t dug up everything he can about her already – just like she used all her detective resources to only to discover that Leslie Lane is his real name (a fact she still can’t bring herself to believe because it sounds like a comic book character) and that his family made their fortune in oil off the Louisiana Gulf Coast. She assumes the accent must have rubbed off him at Harvard, where he majored in law (of course he did, the glib bastard) before getting expelled in his senior year under a cloud of scandal for which all records have been sealed – intriguing, as she imagines it takes quite a lot to get kicked out of college when your parents are oil barons. 

(Lane _père_ is currently running for governor – she’ll have to tell Rorschach that the next time she’s in the mood for one of his political tirades. If he’s ever able to look her in the face again, that is.)

Twilight Lad squints at her. “Wow, is that _you_?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” She beckons him in and closes the door behind him. “Something going on at the club?”

He wanders ahead of her into the hall, looking around himself like a curious bird. “Nah, we close Sundays. Slow vice day.”

“How are your ribs?”

“Hurt like an absolute bitch, but if I pop any more codeine I’ll start drooling on myself. Figured I’d get out to take my mind off it. Am I interrupting anything?”

“No, I was just about to head down and do some tinkering with Archie.”

He arches a dark eyebrow. “Who’s Archie?”

She laughs and slips her glasses back on. “Oh, he’s my all-terrain vehicle. Shaped like an owl’s head. Would you like to see?”

*~*~*

When she leads him down to the basement Ricky is suitably impressed. He throws out questions almost faster than she can begin to answer them. Danielle makes the most of the opportunity – she doesn’t usually get to talk about her inventions with anyone: Hollis likes classic American cars and has a distaste for anything newfangled; Rorschach’s interest in gadgets extends no further than his gas-launched grapple hook and a set of lock picks, both of which he regards as necessities (having implied on more than one occasion that he considers Danielle’s array of tech decadent and self-indulgent). 

Ricky is particularly attracted to the variant costumes, quizzing her about their functions and component materials. She takes demonstrates some of the smaller items she keeps in the utility belt – a mouthpiece that lets her breathe under water for short periods of time if she’s suddenly submerged; flashbombs; taser; police scanner. She lets him wear the goggles and turns out the lights.

“You know,” he says, blinking in wonder at her in the darkness, “I didn’t say so the other day, but I knew who you were. I saw you before.”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe a year ago. I was working a corner in Hell’s Kitchen – selling newspapers, I mean. And running numbers for a local bookie. And yeah, I might have turned a few tricks – gotta make a living, right?”

She nods, but truthfully she has no idea.

“And this gang, Savage Skulls I think it was, they were hassling the shopkeepers for protection money. Most of them caved, but there was this one tough old bird – Polish, I think – who wouldn’t pay up – ‘I didn’t get on that boat to Ellis to give my living up to thugs like you!’ And one night, they came for him, to teach him a lesson – I mean, people called the cops, but the fucking pigs – excuse my French – weren’t going into that neighborhood at two a.m., no way!” He grins, exhilarated. “Then you showed up – dropped from this thing,” he points at Archie, “hovering in the sky like something out of the Twilight Zone. And you kicked their sorry asses – I mean, obviously you did, because they were a bunch of cowardly shitheads – and left them cuffed to lampposts – where they stayed all night, by the way, while people lined up to spit on them. It was so cool.”

She gives a modest shrug, sticking her hands into her jeans pockets. “Just glad to be able to assist.”

“But why?” Ricky presses. “I mean, it’s not like it was your neighbourhood, or your problem.”

She scratches her cheek self-consciously. “It’s like you said – no-one else would.”

*~*~*

The return to the ground floor for coffee and Ricky makes himself at home in her living room. When she comes out of the kitchen with the mugs he’s examining her keepsakes. “Whoa, the first Nite Owl!” he picks up the framed newspaper clipping Hollis gave her. “My my! I’d totally go on a crime-spree if I knew he’d show up to wrestle me to the ground.”

“I figured he must be your style icon.” Danielle smiled wryly, wondering what on earth Hollis would make of this odd, brash kid. Probably toss him a beer and show him the way around an engine.

Next Ricky picks up the glossy photo Twilight Lord gave her. He’s lying on a brocade chaise longue, covered in sweat and glitter (and God-knows what else), a riding crop resting on one taut thigh. ‘From one night owl to another,’ runs along the bottom in curling script and there’s a kiss on one corner in electric blue lipstick. 

She has gotten herself off to that picture more than once – slumping on the sofa with her hand shoved down the front of her pajama pants – but there is no way Ricky can know that (is there?).

“I’m in a couple of movies, you know,” he tells her, raising an eyebrow. 

“That’s horrifying, Ricky,” she says.

“Just saying – if you want a memento of _me_ , I have them on betamax. They’re tasteful.”

She takes off her glasses to rub at the bridge of her nose. “Please don’t bring me jailbait pornos, I mean it.”

He pouts. “Leslie and I are planning a whole series where we’re the dynamic duo of sexy crime. ‘Holy vibrating cockrings, Twilight Lord!’”

“Horrifying,” she says again, setting both their mugs on the coffee table and trying once more to polish her smeared glasses on her machine oil-spotted shirt. Next, Ricky picks up the Charlton Home box and starts rifling through its contents. 

“That’s um... that’s kind of private,” she says. It has no perceptible chastening effect on Twilight Lad, who selects photos and journals and spreads them out on the floor in a semi circle, hunkering down with a grunt of pain and glancing swiftly from image to image, page to page. 

“Your friend Walter, huh? Not a pretty story.”

“Anything like yours?”

He looks up and meets her eyes. “Parts of it. Not whatever part it was made him want to go around acting like a cross between Bruce Lee and a Baptist preacher.”

“Leslie told him some things last night... I don’t know how he’ll take them.”

“Yeah, well, Leslie was pissed off, and not just with him.”

“Meaning, me?”

Ricky shrugs with an affected nonchalance, chains on his jacket jangling. He sweeps together the documents and dumps them back in the box.

“This,” he says, pointing. “It’s not an excuse, not for a grown-ass man. You get that, right?”

She sighs. “I don’t know why everyone thinks I’m his mother.”

“Maybe you act like it.” Ricky sits down next to her and picks up his coffee mug. “Maybe he follows you around like a little lost psycho because you’re the only one with the tolerance levels for his bullshit.”

Danielle thinks for a minute, about one of the times she lost her temper with Rorschach, the dragging silence as he stood staring at her through the ever-shifting mask, hands shoved deep in his overcoat pockets. “Know it can be difficult... with me, Danielle.”

Jesus, that was the fist time she even got him to say her given name, and not the somehow-contemptuous mutter of ‘Miss Dreiberg’. 

She rolls her head sideways on the cushion and looks at Ricky. “Leslie’s really mad, huh?” 

“Disappointed,” he says, archly.

She winces. 

*~*~*

Someone glares at her through a sliding panel in the door and she hears the locks and chains jangling. The burly security guard merely jerks a thumb in the direction of the club’s back rooms – apparently she’s on some kind of approved persons list which is – worrying?

The lights are off in the office, so she decides to try her luck in Gomorrah first. The rooms are all odd shapes and go off each other at angles – she wonders if the disorientating effect is deliberate and what H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe would make of it all. At one point she stumbles into a cloakroom and finds an array of outfits which remind her uncomfortably of her own Nite Owl wardrobe (a hazmat suit and a gimp costume are _not_ the same thing – she doesn’t care what Ricky says). She fights her way out of the tangle of vulcanized rubber and PVC and continues on her quest. 

Each room has at least one item of furniture in it that looks like a gothic take on gym equipment, and a couple of things that look like authoritarian hat stands. A part of her wants to stop at each one and find out how it articulates, then speculate on its purpose, but no – despite the symbolism of this labyrinth, she is not getting sucked further into Twilight Lord’s world of debauchery. _Some of that welding isn’t very neat though_ , she thinks – _no, no, no._

A familiar cracking sound begins to reach her ears and she orientates herself towards it until she reaches what must be the back room – larger than the others, rectangular, with a door at each end.

Twilight Lord is doing his combat training. A number of paper targets are hung around the room and he is lashing holes in then with the very tip of his bullwhip – an act which must require unbelievable control and pin-point accuracy. 

He is wearing what apparently counts for civilian garb with him – leather boots and tight-fitting pants of purple velveteen. The arcs of glitter on his cheeks are gold and green today – Mardi Gras colours. He is wearing his long gloves but his torso is bare and she can’t help but pause to admire the flex of his arms and the ripple of muscle across his back. She watches as he pulls down the targets to inspect the damage, then presses a panel in the wall and deposits them in what is apparently a cupboard or closet. Something about his carriage suggests he knows she is there and is waiting for her to make the first move.

“You know,” she says, nodding at his weapon of choice, “those used to be made of dried bulls’ penises. They were called pizzles.”

He coils the leather around his arm before hooking it back on the specially-designed belt he wears to holster it. “You are always a repository of delightful facts, Danielle,” he says, curtly.

“Listen, I... I’m sorry for interrupting. I just wanted to apologise again, for Rorschach, and to say I’ll cover the costs for your repairs–”

“You wound me, darling – it was never about money. It was the sense of trespass. I wanted this to be a safe place for... certain people, who cannot be fully themselves elsewhere.”

The idea that she’s here to apologise disappears, suddenly, contrition overwhelmed by irritation. “A nice, safe place for people to get whipped and fucked?” She hopes he can see her scornful eyebrow raise under the mask. 

He looks at her pityingly. “You still don’t understand.” 

“No, Leslie, I understand perfectly. You know what I think – you’ve gone corporate. This place is a... Gunga Diner of perversion. The equipment might as well be plastic and formica and bolted to the floor.”

Twilight Lord leans against the bench that dominates the centre of the room and crosses his arms, waiting for her to finish. His look of wry, patient indulgence fills her with inexplicable rage and her voice raises in pitch as she approaches him “... squatter parties in abandoned hotels was illegal but at least it it was rock and roll – it had some fucking soul! At least you weren’t swanning around above it all like you’re the Dalai fucking Lama of S&M!’

She is still spewing polemic when he pulls back her cowl and starts to unzip her costume, tugging it firmly off her shoulders and yanking it all the way to the floor so she is only in her boots. 

“Up you come, good girl,” he half boosts and half hefts her onto the bench. The vinyl covering its padding is cold against her naked thighs.

“Leslie, are you listening to me?” 

He tugs at her heels and the boots go clump-clump onto the floor, her costume with them like a reptile’s shed skin.

“Oh, I agree with you,” he says. “The place is entirely lacking the decadent charm of mould, dry-rot and vermin infestation to be found elsewhere. Alas for this soulless, capitalist age we live in.” A cuff fastens around her left wrist and while she uselessly struggles against it he pinions the other arm and locks that too. “Now, that’s better, isn’t it? Sordid trickery that’s not your fault at all.”

She tries to kick him but his grip on her ankle is very strong. He brings up a metal stirrup and locks it into place, then sets her heel against its base and fastens another cuff. One more follows and she is all but immobilized.

“Leslie–” she starts, but she cuts herself off. He’s not going to release her until he damn well pleases, so shouting or begging won’t serve any purpose other than adding to his already considerable amusement. “Goddamn it,” she mutters, tensing and then relaxing against the bonds – was this how Rorschach felt? What she finds most disconcerting, oddly is the limited view. Twilight Lord is moving around somewhere behind her head – opening another hidden recess, she thinks, and she’s left with the hysterical fear he’ll wander off and leave her there.

He returns, a tube of something in one gloved hand that he sets on her belly. He leans down so their noses almost touch and forces Danielle to awkwardly lift her head to kiss him, smiling at her clumsy, frustrated efforts. Then he circles around to step between her legs, caressing the highly sensitive flesh of the seam where thigh meets hip.

“One day,” he announces, “I’d like to whip you right here.” He spreads his fingers out on her inner thighs, showing where the stripes would be. “I think you’d enjoy it.” 

She tries to think of a riposte – because, really, ‘I’ll like to whip you and I think you’d enjoy it’ – who even says that? All she can manage around her suddenly thick tongue and the thundering of blood in her ears is “no. Not into that, thanks.”

He chuckles as if he knows something she doesn’t – her preferences _vis à vis_ corporal punishment, apparently. The weight of the object on her stomach lifts. 

“People often ask me, ‘Twilight Lord, what is your favourite sex toy?’ and, of course, I always answer ‘why _you are_ , darling’. But really – this is orgasm in a bottle.”

“It’s just lubricant,” she says, raising her head to squint down the length of her own torso.

“Well, it’s the simple things in life, isn’t it Dani?”

She expects him to put the lube on his fingers, but he squeezes it all over her pubic mound. She gasps at its coolness, closing her eyes against the sensation of him rubbing her in a circular motion, dipping into her with his fingertips. 

He circles the around her clit with his thumb, not actually touching the bud of nerve-endings itself. He will though, and she knows exactly how the seam of the vinyl glove feels – it’s enough to make her throb and twitch in anticipation. She arches her spine and her eyelids flutter open. The room itself has no ceiling and the roof is very far away – she feels very small and exposed. 

For just a second she thinks she detects movement in the shadows of the roof beam, far away on the other side of the building. But she blinks and it is gone – her eyes playing tricks on her with the after-images of the light bulbs, perhaps. 

Twilight Lord slides two fingers deep into her cunt, there is pressure and an abundance of sensation, but no friction. She makes an odd sound like a yelp. “Fucking Christ, Leslie!”

“Oh yes, that’s just how I always want you – aroused and faintly outraged.” He finally rubs his thumb over her clit and it’s too much, almost painful; she writhes because she can’t be sure how far he’ll take it; how much she _can_ take.

Suddenly his hand stills and he cocks his head to the side as if listening. 

She hears it too – the faint creak of a floorboard. “What is – I thought I saw... Shit, Leslie, let me down.”

“Not just yet,” he says, gently disengaging his slippery fingers. “Although I do believe we have a visitor.”

She watches him circle the room, listening intently, and then he yanks open a concealed door, pulling a familiar trenchcoated figure with him into the room.

“Hello Walter,” he says. “It is polite to use the front door.”

Rorschach makes that odd grunting noise in his throat. “Locks on fourth floor windows very poor quality,” he says, his monotone somehow communicating defensiveness. “Should improve security, Twilight Lord.”

“Please do feel free to call me Leslie, since we’re among friends.” Danielle can hear from the warm timbre of his voice he is smiling. She lifts her head with effort. They are not beating each other to a pulp which is... unexpected.

“Hello Danielle,” Rorschach says. “Are you in need of assistance?”

She lets her head fall back on the bench with a thump and laughs. She imagines herself floating somewhere above her body, somehow disassociated from the situation where she is naked and glistening and Rorschach is staring at her.

“Isn’t that a chivalrous offer, Dani? Walter would like to ‘assist’ you. Have you any suggestions for how he might do so?”

She licks her dry lips. She has nothing.

Rorschach appears by her side and as she tilts her head towards him she sees that Twilight Lord has steered him there by his shoulders. She wishes she could see his eyes – perhaps then she’d be able to guess what happens next. 

“I told you,” Twilight Lord prompts, “no masks. At least, not to start with.” He removes Rorschach’s fedora and holds it out, a look of impatient expectance. Rorschach hesitates so long she thinks he must be about to bolt, but he rolls up the mask and places it obediently in the hat, followed by the scarf and, more reluctantly, gloves.

Goddamn, Danielle doesn’t know if she’ll ever get used to that plug-ugly, heartbreakingly childish face. Rorschach – Walter – looks like he might actually have washed, as the tidemark of grime is gone from his throat. What that says about his mental state she can’t guess.

Twilight Lord runs his gloved hand up the back of his neck, squeezing like he’s gentling an animal. 

“And the rest of it, that’s it.” He reaches around to unbutton Rorschach’s coat and tug the belt loose. Rorschach doesn’t react as the jacket, vest and shirt are all peeled apart – only when Leslie reaches his bare skin does he jerk back to himself and look away from Danielle. Twilight Lord kisses the side of his mouth, which he clearly wasn’t expecting. He makes an odd strangled sound and grips Leslie’s arm with both hands. Twilight Lord gives a soft chuckle and does it again, more insistently. Danielle realises it’s the first time anyone’s done something so gentle or intimate to Rorschach – she feels an odd twinge of jealousy.

Twilight Lord pulls all the layers off Rorschach’s top half in one go, tossing the heap of fabric aside. Then Rorschach’s belt jangles under his manipulations and Danielle doesn’t think Rorschach will really let him – but he does (Twilight Lord seems to have a lot of practice at undressing people so they barely notice it). 

Rorschach is naked and Leslie is still behind him, kissing his neck and stroking his dick. It is almost enveloped by his black-gloved hand, the one that’s still a little slippery with lube. Rorschach shudders, his wide blue eyes are on her. 

“Danielle,” he says, helplessly.

“That’s it. She wants you, don’t you, Dani?”

“Yes,” she says, her voice is almost as rough as Rorschach’s. All her anger, pity and affection for him are rolled up in a ball, one indistinguishable emotion. 

Rorschach steps between her thighs, his hands hesitating above her waist. He looks over his shoulder at Leslie. “Important for her to be restrained?”

Danielle starts to laugh again, the hysteria returning – what does Rorschach think, that if she was untied she’d savage them both?

“No Walter, it’s not important at all – just a game we were playing. Would you like her to be free?”

He nods and leans over to unfasten one set of cuffs. She feels Twilight Lord unshackling her feet, the stirrups folded back into their former place. She holds out her hand and Rorschach helps her sit up. Her first instinct is to catch his narrow waist between her knees, just make sure he’s not inclined to go anywhere. Leslie grins at her, his chin resting on Rorschach’s shoulder. She leans in to kiss him, just briefly, before she gets to Rorschach, who is incredibly clumsy when it comes to this, lips wet and teeth coated in grainy sugar.

She can feel the rapid rise and fall of his chest – each inhalation pushes his burning-hot skin against her sensitive nipples. “So good,” she tells him, words half-slurred against the skin of his cheek. She squeezes her thighs to bring him closer and feels the curious prod of his dick against her inner thigh. She reaches down to squeeze him and he gives her a startled look.

“Danielle...”

“It’s alright, I’m ready.”

She presses his tip against her vulva and tilts her hips up, hoping he’ll at least meet her halfway on this. He almost falls on her in his confusion and eagerness. Leslie grasps his waist with one hand and shoulder with the other, and pushes him at a better angle. 

It occurs to Danielle that Twilight Lord is using Rorschach as a toy to fuck her and whatever she does, she must not laugh. The amusement slides down her throat to add to the arousal still flipping and turning in her stomach. She wishes Rorschach would bite her or drag his short nails down her chest – something to ground her and stop her just wriggling around in foolish delight. It is beyond surreal – Rorschach’s dick is inside her and her cunt keeps clenching and unclenching around it involuntarily.

Rorschach gets in a few more coordinated thrusts before he shudders violently against her and makes a noise somewhere between a choke and a wheeze – she looks over his shoulder and sees that Twilight Lord now has one hand on Rorschach’s inner thigh while the middle finger of the other has disappeared up into him to the second knuckle.

Rorschach turns his head and stares open-mouthed, as if its something he can’t believe someone would actually _do_. Leslie grins, leans in and kisses his slack mouth. 

“Relax for me, good boy. Tilt your hips – yes, that’s right.”

Rorschach groans and buries his face in Danielle’s chest. She can actually feel his dick twitch _in_ her, which is... unimaginably obscene and suddenly she is a lot closer to coming. 

It occurs to her that Rorschach – Walter – is very sensitive – hence all the wrapping up in filthy layers to keep himself uncomfortable and everyone else at a distance. She strokes down his ribs, watches Leslie’s black-gloved hand twist, glistening with more lubricant.

An idea rises up like a bubble from the unsuspected depths of her mind. She leans back and rubs her nipple against Rorschach’s mouth, feels the twitch of his tongue and the coolness of his harsh breathing. “Do you want Leslie to fuck you?” she asks, stroking a lock of hair over his ear (God, he has freckles everywhere). “Hm? I think he will if I ask him nicely.”

Twilight Lord glances up – for the briefest moment his face registers shock, then softens into exhilaration. He leans over to kiss her and bite at her bottom lip – she had forgotten how tall he is, seeming to loom over them both.

Rorschach has to think about it with his eyes closed as Twilight Lord pushes deeper. Then Danielle feels him nod against her, a rumble of pleasure coming up from his throat.

“He says yes, Leslie.”

Twilight Lord lifts one of her heels onto his shoulder and rubs her shin with his cheek, tickling and scratching with the faintest suggestion of stubble. His belt jangles as he unbuckles it. “Oh, and are we to imagine he also says ‘please’?”

She looks down at where his face is still pressed to her bosom and sees Rorschach open one eye, which blazes fiercely at Twilight Lord. Maybe Rorschach is keeping himself sane by imagining his revenge when Walter is finished.

“Please,” Danielle says. Something tingles in her throat and chest, pools in the pit of her stomach and trickles further down. It’s what was missing before – all those times sex was an unsatisfying ordeal, even with a partner who was perfectly nice and by no means unskilled. Physical sensation just isn’t enough – not for her – it’s this raw, sharp-edged fantasy built of words that resonate – words of permission and denial, warmth and chastisement. 

Oh hell, she _is_ a pervert. She must never give Leslie the satisfaction of confessing any of this. 

He is preoccupied anyway – staring at where he’s breaching Rorschach, a bead of sweat follows the curve of his cheekbone, smearing the glitter. Rorschach grunts and pushes back, eyelids fluttering and pale thighs trembling – Danielle almost murmurs something in awe about how eager he is, before realising that he would actually die of shame on the spot. She suspects he knows it, anyway, and that’s kind of the point. 

Twilight Lord is a lot better at having the right things to say in these situations. “Good boy,” he murmurs, patting a freckled flank. “Good boy, take it just like that.” 

They rock him between them. Danielle clings to Rorschach’s shoulders and rubs herself off against the hard muscles of his abdomen. Twilight Lord fucks him deeper than she would have thought possible, but Rorschach’s hips snap back with grunts of encouragement. It really shouldn’t surprise her that he likes it rough. 

Rorschach doesn’t make a sound when he comes – just throws his head back and opens his mouth, throat working – like a spirit is leaving him. They both hold him upright, murmuring soft praise against his cooling skin and it takes a long time for him to stop shaking. 

*~*~*

Twilight Lord walks to the door with them, stepping outside to stretch and light a cigarette. Beyond the awning that shelters them it is raining heavily, water hissing onto the sidewalks. 

Rorschach has all his clothes back on, but they look... wrongly assembled, somehow, like they won’t hang right or fall back into their usual creases. He stares off into the middle distance and says. “Think it unwise to continue in partnership, Nite Owl. Integrity compromised.”

“Mine or yours?” she asks. “Throw me a pronoun here, Walter.”

“Mine. You made... no vows.”

Twilight Lord chuckles richly at this. She turns her head to give him a silencing glare, then snaps back to Rorschach. “Vows? So in this metaphor you’re the priest of justice, are you? Or married to the streets?”

“Appreciate... you not mocking, Danielle.”

“If you made a vow never to what... enjoy yourself? Get laid once in a while? Whatever it was, it was a really stupid one.”

Rorschach’s mask swirls, as incommunicative as ever. “Would not expect you to understand.”

“Why, because I’m a woman, and therefore a whore?”

Rorschach makes a sound of alarm in the back of his throat, stiffening.

“I saw the Charlton Home records, you know.” She places a hand on his elbow and feels him tense – she wants to laugh and tell him how ridiculous his prudishness is now. “Look, you had an unimaginably shitty childhood and you didn’t deserve that, no-one does. But sticking every person in the goddamn world in your little boxes marked ‘victim’ or ‘abuser’, that doesn’t help anyone – least of all you.”

He shrugs her off and steps into the rain, turning up his collar as his heels click away on the asphalt. “Conversation is over. See you around, Nite Owl.”

“Walter–” She calls, then her voice dies away as she finishes with a mutter of “Christ, you asshole just...”

Twilight Lord touches the small of her back. “He’ll be back, you know. They always are.”

She sighs, her hands on her hips as she watches Rorschach round a corner through the haze of rain. “Right now, Leslie, I don’t know whether to thank you or punch you in the dick.”

A stream of smoke trails from between his upturned lips into the damp air. “Well then, _à bientôt_ , Dani.”

*~*~*

**Epilogue**

Twilight Lord makes it back to his penthouse just before dawn. He emerges from the shower only to find a lump has appeared in his bedclothes.

“Well, well, what have we here?” he muses, one hip against the doorframe and the silk of his robe sticking to his damp skin. “Who’s been sleeping in my bed? Is it Goldilocks or is it the Twilight Lad?”

The sheets slide off his protégé’s body down to the waist. He looks drowsy and inviting, his skin has that dewy plumpness that only comes with youth and Twilight Lord strongly considers taking a bump of coke and having at it. Then he remembers Ricky’s injured ribs and gives a regretful sigh, easing himself down on the bed.

He ruffles the youth’s hair. “Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?”

Ricky yawns. “You know, here and there. Nite Owl showed me her lair.”

“I take it that isn’t a euphemism?”

He grins. “Leslie, when have I ever used a euphemism?”

“You are a tactless little bastard,” the elder man agrees. 

“Hey, you should be thanking me. I sent her your way – I take it she turned up?”

“Oh, this evening I had the pleasure of _both_ our crime-fighting friends. It was spectacular.”

Ricky thumps his shoulder lightly. “No way! Not even you could pull that off.”

“Ye of little faith, Ricky. That is why I am the master and you are just the apprentice.”

“Bull. Shit.” he scoffs. “Go on then, tell me how you did it.”

Twilight Lord does, not skimping on description. 

“Wow,” Ricky says, his mouth a perfect ‘o’ of astonishment. “Did you know he’d crack like that?”

Twilight Lord settles himself with an arm behind his head. “Not for sure, but I had... an intuition.”

“That’s so cool,” Ricky says, a breathless, ordinary teenager for just one moment. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Anything, _mon trésor_.”

“You think what we do, and what they do – is it, you know, incompatible?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well I mean, Danielle’s not the first Nite Owl, right? And she can’t do it forever–”

Twilight Lord’s soft, intimate laughter curls around them both. “You can do anything, kid. You’ll be trained by the best.”


End file.
